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Tuesday, 31 December 2013

Conspiracy theories have been
popular largely because the human mind responds to the irrational and the
intoxicating inexplicable or enigmatic. This is largely because the rational and empirically-based explanation
is not nearly as stimulating to the brain that craves excitement to fill the emotional
void. It has always fascinated me that people cling to conspiracy theories,
even long after empirical evidence is presented to prove them incontrovertibly false. In some
cases, however, empirical evidence validates conspiracy theories, thereby providing
further ammunition to those that find such theories appealing, especially
in cases involving social, political and economic elites that are involved in scandals, corruption, and "conspiracies". When the World Bank estimates that at least 10 percent or $7.3 trillion of the world's GDP estimated at $73 trillion is black market or subterranean economic activity, how can the average person not accept conspiracy theories and lapse into fatalism?

Why do conspiracy theories have mass
appeal regardless of cultural differences? Is this unique of our epoch of widespread cynicism among the masses, or
has it always been the case since ancient times? And why do such theories have greater level of acceptability in traditional societies where religion dominates than in secular ones? A conspiracy theory about the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, for example, has as much appeal in Catholic
Argentina as it does in orthodox Russia, or Hindu/Buddhist India. A
conspiratorial work of fiction about a secret society of powerful individuals would have as much appeal
among Japanese readers as among Spaniards or Egyptians. The same holds true for a
conspiratorial non-fiction work about the US Central Intelligence Agency carrying out assassination plots, the National Security Agency spying on millions of people within and outside the US, or International Monetary Fund deliberately sinking debtor economies in order to transfer wealth from the periphery to the metropolis and create conditions of massive capital concentration.

Naomi Klein's book about the IMF is an example of populist hollowness that appeals to the
masses already suspicious of large organization that impact the lives of millions. Those who have studied the role of the IMF using archival materials realize that this extraordinarily thin account
that Klein presents is intentionally designed to appeal to the reader's emotions and sense of cynicism about
powerful institutions. While scholarly works about the role of the IMF do in fact reveal that the agency works to sustain and strengthen finance capitalism at the expense of the middle class and laborers, Klein's work has as much relevance to reality as Martians building
the pyramids in ancient Egypt.

However, the book sells precisely because it is not scholarly, takes the reader through a fictional ride of intrigue like a James Bond film, and at the same time, it indoctrinates without
providing any redeeming value to the reader interested in understanding the
IMF's true mechanisms and relationship to governments and finance capital. That the book is more
fiction than non-fiction appeals to people not just in the US but around the
world as much as Harry Potter because it reads like Harry Potter, and it has about as much value in terms of
entertainment, that is to say, stimulating and satisfying the irrational the mind.

Are people attracted to conspiracy theories because the dominant irrational
in the mind craves to be fed; is it because we live in the age of cynicism
when institutions from religious and education to political and business thrive
by deceiving or at the very least manipulating the public; is it because there
is a sense of loss of personal control of the environment and the individual
yields to conspiracy to explain the deeper complexities of simple reality; is
it that humans have a fundamental mistrust of each other and of themselves and
would rather believe the worst; does belief in conspiracy theories makes us
feel more intelligent and affords us the illusion that we have control of the
situation; or it is because we love heroes and villains and conspiracies feed
on such protagonists? No matter how we deconstruct the mass appeal of
conspiracy theories, they do fill an emotional gap and entertain the mind like
no empirical evidence can.

Many people are favorably inclined to conspiracy because they are conditioned
to be cynical by life itself that beats them on the head on a daily basis.
Conspiracy theories are not the exclusive domain of any political ideology or
political organization or regime. Besides infamous dictators like Hitler and
Stalin that have manipulated public opinion by advancing conspiracy theories,
leaders of democracies like George W. Bush have done the same to advance
policies linked with domestic security and foreign affairs.

How can people not be conspiratorial in their thinking when their politicians,
priests, and social leaders either lie or hide the truth and are guilty of
hypocrisy. Priests ask their flock to be virtuous, while they are hardly up to
the task; politicians demand honesty in citizens, while their acts are hardly
exemplary; community leaders using their positions for private gain at the
expense of the community. The amazing thing is not that there are so many
cynical people, but why isn't everyone in this world that we live in?

The more corrupt and perfidious secular and religious leaders, the greater mass
appeal conspiracy theories will have. Everyone must have seen an adult parent
instructing the child not to smoke while the parent is holding a cigarette in
hand; or not to do drugs while popping sleeping and tranquilizer pills.
However, conspiracy theory belief goes beyond such hypocrisy to the core of a
sense of fatalism about life itself and the belief that free will has severe
limitations. People are so overwhelmed by institutions that determine their
lives that they feel powerless. This sense of powerlessness helps to weaken the
masses and strengthens the elites. Therefore, conspiracy theories about the
elites inadvertently help elite interests as they make the masses feel
paralyzed in their fatalism.

In early April 2011, when I wrote
the brief piece on conspiracy theories, it was because individuals with
graduate degrees were telling me that there is a global conspiracy by the IMF
and European Central Bank to lower living standards, and that the method
adopted was no different than the CIA used in counterinsurgency operations. To
no avail, I tried to argue that CIA operations have their own logic, and IMF
austerity measures, now adopted by the European Central Bank, have a different
logic that they follow and that analyzing counterinsurgency operations must be
a separate enterprise from analyzing monetary and fiscal policy. Even more irrational, some of the same people in Greece that embrace Klein's IMF book also believe that airplanes are constantly spraying cities with chemicals to keep them docile and not resist the IMF austerity measures! When I joked about this with a former banker, his response was that there is validity to the "chemical spraying theory", otherwise, how can we explain the public's lack of resistance to misery?

Given that I failed to convince even
the most rational people, I often ask why they yield to conspiracy theories instead of seeking rational explanations. In
correcting my wrong impression, they made it clear that in embracing so-called
conspiracy theories, they were indeed more intelligent than the naive person
that tried to find a rational-empirical explanations. In probing deeper, it
became obvious that belief in conspiracy entailed a degree of intelligence that
the 'other' lacked, a degree of cynicism that was baptized 'intelligence'. This
too is an integral part of our modern mass culture, given birth by the
widespread cynicism in the political and economic arena, among the elites
ranging from political and economic to religious and academic. Why do
conspiracy theories persist?

Clearly, I am at all expecting the average person beaten down by unjust institutions to accept the synthesis of rationalism and empiricism that I. Kant developed in his philosophy, or his views on causality and free will. However, I am astonished that more than 200 years have passed since Kant warned about human beings clinging to ignorance and superstition, largely because they are intellectually lazy. Here we are in the early 21st century when there are plans for interplanetary colonization and people insist on conspiracy theories that force them into a state of fatalism. Modern science and technology has not had much impact on the mind when it comes to feeding the emotional aspect of the brain what it craves, except that once in a while conspiracy theories do validate those who advocate them, and there are many of those examples.

In examining the "Iran-Mexico
plot" of 2011, it is now very clear that there was a rush to judgment by the mass
media and US and pro-US governments, before there was a full investigation in
the case. Not just the US government, but all of the Western World and its mass media lined up behind US official explanations about an Iranian role where there was none. Today, there is some evidence that an exiled group may have been
behind the plot, but that is lost in history and all one remembers is that Iran carried out an "evil act". This is merely one of many conspiracy theories where the only thing remaining is the conspiracy theory while facts, especially in this case that they are damaging to US credibility, are ignored. The lesson here then is not that the individual is intellectually lazy and prone to superstition craving emotional fulfillment through conspiracy theories, but that governments and private institutions such as religion and the mass media shape the conspiracy minded public to be receptive and remain fatalistic for this fosters docile behavior and acceptance of the status quo.

Sunday, 29 December 2013

Does widespread cynicism throughout the world in the early 21st century
about political, judicial, business, religious, educational, social and
cultural institutions widen the gap between the individual and the
community, thereby contributing to deteriorating societal conditions and
erosion of "humane" individuals in an immoral society? Scandals seem as routine as daily life, at least they are so treated to keep the existing superstructures going. Everything involving corporate executives, banks, as well as politicians that people once deemed powerful - everyone from Egypt's Mubarak and Turkey's Erdogan to Italy's Berlusconi and countless other corrupt individuals that have tasted political power - all of it is part of a decadent superstructure that people simply believe is beyond their control.

Reflecting the interests of the financial, political,
and socio-cultural elites in every society, superstructures mold the individual who must
conform to the immoral system out of necessity for survival and thus be a
part of substructures. While critical of the corrupt and decadent
superstructures, the individual follows similar patterns of behavior in
everything from substructure involvement to personal conduct in
relationships ranging from personal to business and public transactions.
The hypocritical aspect of the individual is a reflection of the
hypocrisy in the elite-dominated superstructures held together by the
pyramid of decadence.

To many citizens, politicians are unrelentingly deceitful and
manipulative because they get away with distortion of reality owing to
PR and populist skills, combined with a well-orchestrated media machine
behind them. Similarly, individuals in their own microcosm, especially
individuals who wield power in the private sector, adopt patterns of
behavior intended to achieve success through manipulation and deception,
regardless of the impact on individuals and social welfare. Shallowness
and superficiality prevalent among guardians of superstructures
permeates throughout society and it is the dominant mode of
communication between individuals mistrustful and fearful of the other
who in turn never goes beyond appearances, beyond fear, beyond the
apparent self-interest of survival.

Some young people are of the opinion that pursuing the conformist route of
decadence as carved out by existing superstructures yields rewards. Otherwise, they may suffer
the multifarious consequences of socio-political alienation by following
a path of idealism intended to create a more humane society. The
existing amoral at best and immoral more realistically superstructures
reinforce atomism and suppress collective consciousness and communal
dynamics. Should citizens simply remain docile and permit the continuing superstructures and substructures to perpetuate societal misery and social injustice, or should citizens become active as it is their duty to improve society? Has the value system of bourgeois society, combined with the age of the web made people so atomistic and alienated from the collective community that human beings are incapable of collective action? If so, can there possibly be hope for improving social justice in unjust societies?

Friday, 27 December 2013

During the decade of "irrational exuberance," as former FED chief
Allan Greenspan baptized it, investment firms employed market analysts with
the specific goal of talking stocks and bonds up or down, so that a few
large clients could buy or sell and make a quick profit in the process.
These "stock and bond plugs" by supposedly "objective" analysts
constituted free speech. Those who naively accepted their advice well,
"buyer beware."
Hedge Funds, partly responsible for the crisis of 2009-2010, also
employed such "credible analysts" who were "market canaries."

Business
dailies, journals, TV shows, Blogs, and newsletters became an integral
part of the big "investment scam" where "objective analysis" flowed
freely to manipulate markets. Once the internet bubble burst and the
scam of "objective stock and bond analysts" was exposed, banks and
investment firms had to change their strategy to continue amassing quick
profits by manipulating the securities and commodities markets around
the world, and in the process to defraud the multitudes who have
investments in stock and bonds, many through their retirement
portfolios.

Government regulators were well aware of what the banks and investment
firms were doing, everything from fixing rates to illegal activities that included money laundering. Against the background of a "hands-off" climate and a
neo-liberal ideology, and given the reality of large campaign
contributions by banks and investment firms, government did very little
to restore credibility, with the exception of egregious cases where
modest fines were imposed and class action law suits that yielded a tiny
fraction to defrauded investors. Because most market observers and
participants became well aware of the scam that banks and investment
firms perpetrated, a more credible method was needed in order to defraud
more efficiently. This is where the "objective academic" freelancing as
"consultant" comes in. Prominent economists, including Nobel Prize
winners, took advantage of the lucrative opportunities to serve as
"consultants" for banks and investment firms, as they had before the
recent crisis.

The public generally assumes the economist as an academic is
"objective" motivated by theoretical models, empirical data, and wisdom
combined with a conscience rooted in serving public welfare. However,
the crisis of 2008-2010 made it apparent that such individuals were on
the payroll to deliver their employer's "gospel truth" with the sole
purpose of swaying the market in everything from crude oil and currency
values to bonds and stocks.
This new "investment scam" is continuing. Hesitant to mention specific
companies, media outlets and individuals involved, I will only point out
that in the past several months a number of Hedge Funds, business TV
and web programs, newspapers and magazines have employed "investment
scam" artists parading in legitimate "economists" suits to continue
manipulating currency markets, stocks, commodities and especially bonds.

The most recent example of how academics and the corporate media are in
the service of scam-artists involves Euro-bonds and the euro. On the
eve of the Davos economic conference in 2011, a very popular New
York-based business TV network, a popular London financial newspaper,
and a world-renowned economist simultaneously announced that Spain,
Greece, Portugal, and possibly Ireland if its austerity programs fails
are the Euro-Zone's weak links on the verge of bankruptcy. It is true
that all EU countries are experiencing very serious deficits that should
drive down the currency and the bonds higher.

The EU's strongest
economy Germany is suffering a staggering budgetary deficit of 6% of GDP
(86 billion euros), while Greece, one of the smallest EU members, is
heading the deficit countries with budgetary deficit at 12.7% of GDP.
The IMF has announced that in fact most countries suffer from
inordinately high budgetary and balance of payments deficits. The
deficits are a result of the recent crisis that required immense public
funds to save finance capitalism. Naturally, this means higher bond
yields, and lower value of the currency for EU.
Here is where the "investment scams" enter into the picture,
disseminating disinformation to make even greater profits by forcing the
Euro-bond yields higher and the euro's value lower.

As the
fourth-largest EU economy, Spain under a Socialist regime became a
target of the disinformation regarding the degree to which specific EU
country austerity measures would work to lower government deficits and
restore market confidence. Spain with the highest unemployment in the EU
has no room for the type of austerity measures that Ireland adopted, so
it is an easy target. At the Davos conference of 2011, business journalists
asked European heads of state if more rigid austerity measures are
required to restore "investor confidence." To illustrate the absurd
limits of finance capital's demands for social sacrifice, former Greek Prime
Minister Papandreou sardonically replied that his government could
impose euthanasia on 700,000 retirees to solve the deficit much faster. In 2011, this was a joke perhaps in poor taster. At the end of 2013, it is not far from the truth, given that the elderly have to choose between basic food needs, heating their homes and medications.

The EU central Bank and number of top EU officials, including heads of
state and finance ministers had to undo alarmist "investment scam"
propaganda by reassuring the public that EU monetary unity and market
solidarity remains unshaken. The same officials confronted the media and
economists that were spreading "investment scams," and the latter had
to retract and claim they simply did not have "sufficient information"
with which to analyze bond and currency trends. In some cases,
"investment scam" artists blatantly lied about empirical events that
were groundless, while in others they were simply feeding hyperbolic
analysis on existing data and reaching absurd conclusions, such as "the
end of the EU and the common currency."

In both cases, the purpose was
to drive up bond yields and the euro down, which coincidentally serves
the interests of EU exporters along with bond investors, in some cases
one and the same entity.
At the outbreak of the current crisis, the EU proposed tighter
government regulation of banks, investment firms, and especially
off-shore companies that shield large investors. Obama did not go along
with the EU proposal until after the Kennedy Senate seat in
Massachusetts went to the Republicans and the Supreme Court ruled to
restore corporate campaign contributions under the guise of free speech.

Exploitation of the public by a handful of fraudulent investors
determined to continue manipulating markets so they can amass greater
wealth is indeed a Constitutional right under free speech protection. I
have no doubt that when the Founding Fathers debated the merits of free
speech they had in mind "investment scams." The question after the early
21st century's first major global economic recession is whether the
role of the state in protecting public welfare is comparable to
protecting national sovereignty from enemies foreign and domestic.
Although free speech is not free if it excludes certain groups,
currently it does exclude those engaged in "hate speech," libel, or
speech intended to terrorize citizens (e.g. fire in the theatre, there
is a bomb on this train, etc.).

Should governments curtail free speech
to prevent the "investment scams," should they treat them in the same
manner as libel suits, should they treat "scams" in the same manner as
"hate speech," should they impose heavy fines for disinformation that is
after all commonly used in the political arena? If "hate speech" is
contrary to a democratic society because it promotes conflict and social
disharmony, do "investment scams" cause far more damage to public
welfare?
Governments will do very little if anything for the very simple reason
that the "investment scam" artists are an integral part of the
capitalist system and they help in the relentless process of capital
accumulation on a global scale.

Specifically, the pressure on the
Euro-bond and the euro in recent weeks has actually forced EU
governments to squeeze more concessions from labor and the middle
class--raising retirement age, lowering social benefits, lowering wages,
more flexible labor market with less job security, higher indirect
taxes, and greater incentives for corporate investment. The "investor
scams" that manipulate markets every single day prove that Adam Smith's
"Invisible Hand" is visibly corrupt, and left to its own devices it will
prolong the pain of billions of people around the world who work for a
living.

Friday, 20 December 2013

The domain of human prejudice falls mostly in the domain of the social sciences, although the hard sciences also have an important say in this area. Clearly, the human proclivity of prejudice rooted in egoism and elitism, both innate and learned behavior must be analyzed to understand the human mind that discriminates. However, there is also the institutional and legal prejudice that feeds the innate in the human condition. If a society has laws rooted in racial, ethnic, religious, gender, sexual orientation differences of minorities the entire society tends to conform, including individuals who would otherwise be opposed to such tendencies.

Prejudice is hierarchical, starting from the family, to the neighborhood, to the tribe, to the ethnic group and nation and to groups of nations. Racial-ethnocentric divisions have existed for centuries, although the modern form has its roots in the European era of the Commercial Revolution that launched an outward expansion adventure from Europe to the rest of the world. Prejudice, therefore, is subject to historical and cultural factors in a specific sociopolitical context that is both institutionalized and imbedded into the social consciousness.

Ancient Romans entertaining prejudice has nothing to do with 21st century Italians and their own circumstances that lead them to thought and behavioral patterns of prejudice, any more than prejudice by the North-West Europeans conquering much of the Southern Hemisphere. The question is whether in the 21st century the northern hemisphere, especially in North America and Europe is carrying on the legacy of colonialism when it comes to prejudice and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Considering that the victims of colonialism were people of the southern Hemisphere, and the colonizers from the northern, is there lingering prejudice rooted in a north-south divide? If this is the case, is such prejudice rooted in racial, ethnic, religious and cultural differences, or is it sheer opportunism and economic exploitation that uses race, ethnicity, religion and culture as a pretext to retain prejudiced attitudes?

The term "prejudice" refers to prejudging race, ethnicity, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or lifestyle mode before knowing the facts of the case. Although prejudice is as old as civilization, it was not until the 19th century that a more systematic (or scientific, if one prefers the term) approach to the subject started. This is partly because there were biologists and doctors who adopted Social Darwinism and argued that whites are superior to non-whites not just in appearance but biologically as well. Discrimination by the majority at the expense of the minority population was purely political, economic and social, but justified by some of its apologists in the framework of pseudo-science, including Social Darwinism and other extreme theories of hatred that were institutionalized and an integral part of the law and society.

Within the broader term of "prejudice" is the phenomenon called Nativism, which existed in the US during the 19th century, but also in Eastern Europe during the interwar era when pro-Fascist movements and regimes became known as "Native Fascism". At the core of the Eastern European Balkan phenomenon was ultra nationalism under authoritarian regimes with Fascist-style policies. “Nativist” politics and prejudice of immigration are very old in both
US and Europe, as are the arguments against immigration. The irony of
all this is that the American colonists were invaders and destroyers of
native cultures, as were the European Barbarians who migrated from
Central Asia to colonize the continent.

As liberal democracies evolved to permit greater tolerance for women, as well as religious, ethnic, and racial minorities that constituted the majority of the population, although the institutional structure treated them as minorities, the legal system allowed for recourse of victims of prejudice. However, prejudice and discrimination are deeply rooted in a society, ingrained into the culture in such far reaching manner that there is a huge gap between what is legal and what is actual. The best evidence of this is the US that remained an apartheid society in practice, especially in the South, for an entire century, from the Civil War until the Civil Rights movement. Not that Europe was above ethnic racial and religious prejudice, considering that in the 19th and 20th century Europe had regimes - from Tsarist Russia to Nazi Germany - aiming at targeting minorities, in some cases totally eliminating them; and all along the majority population going along with such blatant persecution.

But that is far too
distant, far too historical and unemotional to have any relevance in
the present.
If indeed the countries of origin would be developed on
“self-sufficiency” models instead of globalization rooted in draining
their resources and keeping them perpetually underdeveloped, then I
would agree with the argument some have advanced against
“temporary immigrants.” The fact that there is “permanent and temporary
foreign labor” is proof that the countries of origin are not developed
in large measure because they exist under exploitative models of
integration. This is not to excuse the utterly corrupt public and
private sectors of the “countries of origin” (invariably underdeveloped
in Africa, Asia, and Latin America), but they do not operate
separately and distinctly from the world capitalist economy.

Regarding
the impact of private remittances, I agree about their positive value to the country of
origin, and thank God remittances are something although they come with
the hard work, deplorable living conditions, and exploitative wages of
legal and illegal immigrants in the advanced capitalist countries. Be
that as it may, are remittances a structural solution to fix the chronic
problem? Nor do I believe that trickle-down economics, as the great
John Kenneth Galbraith noted during the Reagan-Thatcher decade, works to
do much for the lower classes of either poor or rich nations.

I think it is
an insult to the millions of Mexicans in the US who have helped build
the US economy in the past 200 years to dismiss them as gardeners and
swimming pool cleaners for the rich, and to limit their vast and
multifarious contributions to the US economy and social fabric. I
believe kind well-intentioned people–whether politicians and
intellectuals, or the corner drug store pharmacist in
Cleveland or Paris, feel less secure when they see or hear about waves
of immigrants threatening the status quo. I am not sure why people find
it extraordinary that the poor–in this case poor immigrants–commit
crimes, given that poverty is the real crime that capitalism
precipitates.

And I am seriously concerned when people single out
Muslims, Africans, Latin Americans, Asians, or any other group to prove
their point about the evils of immigration, and then they ask for
empirical evidence to prove that higher percentage of crime is caused by
natives instead of immigrants. All of this implies there is something
in the DNA of the immigrant that causes him to commit crimes, and that
the environment is free of any responsibility. As an emotionally
charged issue, especially in this decade after 9/11 and the
US-western-led wars against Muslims, immigration on the surface is an
easy target for all calamities people believe befall their country, not
realizing that as “established natives” they are descendants of
immigrants.

That ethnic, racial and religious prejudice is on the rise owing to the global economic crisis of 2008-present entails that a strong trend of ultra right wing groups has been gaining strength across Europe. This is evident by organizations that use the pretext of Muslim terrorism threat to justify anti-Islam hate speech and acts against Muslims whether they are recent immigrant, legal or illegal, as well as residents of Europe. Muslims as well as gypsies have become the scapegoats for all the ills of capitalist society falling apart because its financial structure has experienced enormous strains from within largely because of scandalous practices.

In January 2012, I wrote an article arguing that prejudice is caused by low intelligence. "Scholarly studies have shown that there is a correlation between
prejudice of any type from race and ethnicity to gender and religious
caused by ignorance, isolation - the absence of cultural diffusion - the
environment, and low IQ. One recent study- Gordon Hudson lead
psychologist - emphasizes low intelligence, social conservatism and
prejudice. In an era of the war on terror aimed against Islam, the topic
of prejudice ought to concern the entire world, but the question is
whether a scientist ought to place more emphasis on neuro-biological
factors than psychological and environmental, or whether to adopt a
holistic approach."

One could argue that a great deal of human behavior can be explained by low intelligence, including why people act against their own best interests.That is true enough, but when the victims of prejudice are primarily from the poor Southern Hemisphere, namely Africans, Asians and Latin Americans, while the perpetrators of prejudice are concentrated in the rich Northern Hemisphere, then the North-South divide is not just cultural, but economic that determines the cultural divide and accounts for the persistence of prejudice. The grossly unequal wealth distribution is at the root of of the North-South divide and prejudice that accompanies it.

Economic hegemony allows for cultural hegemony and permits the mind of those living in the Northern Hemisphere, even those impoverished to feel good about themselves that they are part of a "superior"area in comparison with the inferior Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, prejudice and discrimination are as economically determined as culture and account for the persistence of this divide in the last four centuries. The only saving grace for those in the Southern Hemisphere or with roots there is if their individual class status transcends their racial, ethnic, religious status. White Christians and Jews respect a Muslim from Indonesia who is millionaire and treat that individual with deference because of the wealth factor. At the same time, however, a factory worker in Bangladesh has less worth than the commodity she produces. Despite the emergence of economic strength in Asia and Brazil in the course of the 21st century, it is highly unlikely that the North-South prejudice divide will end. On the contrary, it will intensify as Europeans and North Americans will become even more prejudiced against immigrants from the Southern Hemisphere.

Wednesday, 18 December 2013

In all economic contracting cycles throughout finance
capitalism’s history, labor (blue collar skilled to unskilled, agricultural day
laborers to small farmers, and white collar, clerical to professionals and
mid-management) ultimately pays the price for dislocation. The middle class, as
the media and governments define it today to include a very broad range from
upper working class to highly paid professionals, experiences downward pressure
toward ‘proletarization’ status instead of upward mobility as it envisions its
destiny. Very clear in the 1930s, this phenomenon is taking place today amid
the current crisis not only because people are losing jobs, homes, retirement
savings, etc., but because the future looks bleak for them and their children.

Besides part-time and contract work, blue-collar and white-collar workers are
asked to accept pay cuts, reduced benefits, reduced work schedules, flexible
working conditions, all of which will be accompanied by the expectation of
retiring at a later age. Where are the blue collar, white collar, and the
recent ‘proletariatized’ middle class headed and will they emerge stronger than
they did during the Great Depression, helped immensely by the war, or will the
middle class society lapse into chronic decline? There is a fundamental
question of whether the ‘middle class’ was on sound footing, or artificially
created by a deficit-spending system now in crisis. On paper, the combination
of low labor values in the Third World that
allowed for higher incomes in the advanced countries and the postwar credit
economy accounted for the quantitative and qualitative growth of the middle
class in core countries.

A large percentage of the population in the West, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea
experienced upward mobility in the past 40 years, but a large percentage of the
middle class mobility was because of the credit economy. The ‘wealth effect’
was a mirage because the middle class lived on credit and hoped values in
everything from their incomes to homes and securities would continue to rise.
The current crisis has exposed the bourgeois facade of endless progress and
revealed that a large percentage of the middle class was really working for the
banks – all along, the "proletariatization" of the middle class was taking place
serving both an economic and political purpose.

The US Congressional Budget
Office estimates that in the next three years there will be a $2.9 trillion gap
between productive capacity and actual output; in short, more than 300% the
amount that congress approved as part of Obama’s stimulus package. Such a gap
will mean that the state must decide if the top 10% of income earners bare the
brunt of the cost, or if the middle class and workers will have to endure lower
living standards. Because capital accumulation on a world scale can take place
by the more thorough exploitation of labor, the state will support financial
elites’ efforts to squeeze out the maximum from middle class and workers short
of precipitating social upheaval and political instability.

Arbiter of social
relations through control of the fiscal system, the state will largely
determine how weak the working class and middle class will be for society to
function without paying the price of radicalization and violence. Hovering
around 20% in the US
and rising as it is throughout the world, chronic poverty will remain a
permanent legacy of the current recession. ‘Third World-type’ conditions
already exist within the advanced capitalist countries – families in the
American Deep South and northern inner cities subsist on a couple hundred
dollars per month and rely on food stamps to feed themselves. Conditions for
the bottom 20% of the population are not that much better in the EU where the
prospects for recovery are not as bright as in US, and even less so for Japan.

If
finance capitalism is to survive with the inevitable wealth concentration
within the top 10%, there must necessarily be downward income pressure on the middle
class and workers. Generating greater surplus than the market can absorb will
keep the capitalist economy in a limited-growth mode for at least a decade,
unless the state absorbs the surplus and spends it for social development
instead of defense. Because the effective demand is limited by the earning
power of workers and middle class in the post-credit crisis of the early 21st
century, and the sharply reduced personal wealth (drop in real estate values,
private pensions, and stock portfolios) the illusory middle class ‘wealth
effect’ will remain low and accumulated surplus capital high thus keeping the
world economy under limited growth prospects for a long time.

Of course, China with a
strong state structure and dynamic economy is the exception and of course, we
must science and technology innovation take into account, as well as the degree
to which the state will intervene to limit capital accumulation by the
financial elites. But given existing conditions in the advanced capitalist
countries, what impact will they have on the social order? Because there are
multiple institutional means that condition people toward conformity, most
people exercise self-restraint toward the status quo as they are convinced that
there may be rewards in such behavior and punishment for social dissidence.
There is also the cultural difference in every society - for example, in
western countries historically the individual assumes responsibility for
success or failure and thus internalizes what is in essence an outward or objective
phenomenon like job loss.

The internalization process entails that the
individual feels guilty and may act against himself or loved ones, instead of
criticizing or striking out at the system. Naturally, the mass media, schools,
religion, business, and the state inculcate such thinking into the minds of the
individual who blames himself as a failure, not realizing that the financial
and political elites that control institutions have failed. Accountant John
Smith in Denver lost his life’s savings in the stock market, he cannot find
work, his wife divorced him, and it is all his fault because he has failed to
receive the requisite training to conform to the ‘new market conditions’.
People permit their lives to be conditioned and ruled, and sometimes often
ruined by man-made systems that the entitlement-minded financial and political
elites have forged to retain their privileged status.

The individual has been
conditioned to equate man-made systems with natural disasters like earthquakes
or floods. Part of this thinking is a testament to the resounding success of a
ubiquitous ‘birth-to-death’ PR campaigns that have convinced people to accept
capitalism as ‘natural’, a premise that both Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus
shared. Once people accept that premise, and they aspire to upward mobility
possible only within the system, they never even consider working class
consciousness for to do so is to demean their own self-image the credit economy
makes possible and to lack ambition for individual (bourgeois) success.

How
many ads are there online, in newspapers, etc., about ‘assistant manager’ in
everything from office clerical positions to fast food jobs, when in reality
those are low-paying jobs veiled by a bourgeois ‘status title’ people
appreciate more than income? After all, the ‘real worth’ of the individual was
‘creditworthiness’ bundled as part of net worth, thereby giving the illusion to
a large percentage of people that they were part of capitalism’s success.
Class-consciousness is the enemy of the financial and political elites that
constantly inculcate the idea that ‘all of us must work together and sacrifice’
for the greater good, when in fact the ‘greater good’ is largely the domain of
the elites.

As "proletarization" of the middle class become more apparent, the
current global crisis will evolve into a middle class crisis of alienation,
stratification, and erratic class/status identity. Additionally, there will be
the increasingly prohibitive costs of higher education, especially graduate
school that will be out of reach for a larger percentage of people in the next
decade and possibly the next half century. At the same time, there will be
fewer positions available for the college-educated population that will have to
be highly mobile not only within its own country but internationally and must
accept jobs unrelated to their college degree – a phenomenon that has been
growing in the past decade.

Though society will become increasingly polarized
and likely to remain so because of capital accumulation in a credit-tight
environment, the cyber-eco-bourgeoisie will co-opt and thus de-radicalize a
segment of the recently created ‘proletariatized’ middle class and working
class aspiring to upward mobility and lifestyle. More realistic and self-aware
than the ‘credit bourgeoisie’ of the past half century, the
"cyber-eco-bourgeoisi"e of the 21st century will also be useful to the
political and financial elites in promoting corporatism whether that is in the
US, Japan, or EU.

Tuesday, 17 December 2013

Classical Liberal (Lockean) political theory maintains
that individual consent ought to determine politics and policies. “Wherever, therefore, any number of men so
unite into one society as to quit every one his executive power of the law of
Nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political or
civil society.” John Locke,Second Treatise on Civil Government.
However, the reality is that T. Hobbes’ Leviathan that Locke rejected lives
inside competing interest groups among the elites (including the 17th
century when Locke represented mercantile interests) that have played a
catalytic role in shaping policy in modern pluralistic societies governed by
varieties of Liberal-type constitutions.

Although policy-formation is the
presumed domain of competing interest groups whether politically organized like
the Whig faction in Locke’s time, or modern-day corporate lobbies,
consent-theory is more easily justified and implemented during times of
national emergencies or crises than during ‘normal times’. Having built a
national consensus during the Great Depression for economic reasons, the US continued to
expand the consensus to include the entire Western
Hemisphere under bilateral and multilateral agreements. These
culminated in redefining the Pan-American system during the war, and then
globalized during the Cold War when besides NATO, OAS and SEATO, IFIs were also
established to complete the triumph of Pax Americana.

The dynamics of the Cold War
necessarily resulted in domestic national consensus not only in pluralistic
societies like the US
at the helm of the world-capitalist system, but also in Communist nations and
in the non-aligned bloc. Therefore, the Cold War as the point of origin for
policy-formation and consent-theory entailed that the state forged consensus
among competing interest groups under a neo-corporatist model that would
presumably serve not only the political and financial elites, but the military
establishment, intelligentsia, farmers, and labor unions whose cooperation was
crucial for policy-formation against ‘common external enemy’. Nor is this to be
confused with the military-industrial complex that was only one byproduct of
conformist policy-formation. After the Communist bloc collapsed and China became
thoroughly integrated into the world capitalist system, the institutionalized
co-optation of the disparate interest groups needed to remain intact. This is
not because there was a ‘common external enemy’ - of course one had to be
created as catalyst to interest-group co-optation - but because consent-theory
assumptions were obviated by the changing structure of the political economies
around the world and the neo-liberal globalization trend.

The interdependent
world economic structure as the basis of consent-theory and as a reality cannot
change systemically as Russia,
China,
Brazil,
India,
and even some EU leaders wish. However, economic nationalism – from the
political left and to the ideological right – and varieties of Socialism will
challenge and try to replace classical Liberalism and the American-centered world system as the ideological foundation on
which political economy and international security rest. This means new
international division of labor, redefinition of the terms of trade and
investment that do not disadvantage the Third World
and new ‘North-South’ hemisphere relationship that allows for a more equitable
redistribution of wealth – all of it used as leverage by those wishing to
further dilute Pax Americana. Depending on its severity, the current economic
dislocation will force political and financial elites along with the
intelligentsia to re-examine the ‘consent-theory’ paradigm with the US as the
leader. They must seek alternatives that would ensure policy-formation does not
drift toward the lower classes or to the Third World
whose conformity and co-optation must be guaranteed to prevent any change
either in the social order or the international order.

The unfolding civil
disobedience combined with labor and middle class protests throughout the world
will continue to challenge consent-theory that the political and financial
elites are interested in preserving. Assuming that the forthcoming G-20 meeting
(April 2009) will result in consensus and assuming the Chinese prediction about
national recovery by June 2009 is correct, it may be possible that by
early-to-mid-2010 the US will be coming out of recession as the FED is now
predicting. The EU will realize real growth much later than previously expected
(the latest IMF report is very pessimistic about Europe)
and gradually Japan
and the rest of the world will follow the EU. Such scenario depends largely on
what policies the G-20 will adopt to better-regulate the crippled economy for
the duration.

The middle class and workers will lag far behind in the recovery
process as will the Third World – regrettably, there are no AIG-type bonuses
for the middle class and workers whose consent must be manipulated back toward
support of the elites. In short, the lower the social strata the slower the recovery;
similarly the less the country is developed the slower and more painfully it
will emerge from this crisis. The crisis will exacerbate societal polarization
that manifests itself in increased social protests, xenophobia, ethnocentrism,
racism, chauvinism, etc. Whether it is to the extreme right or left, going to
the roots of society in times of crisis will be a normal response on the part
of the masses; that is where a large segment of the population feels a sense of
belonging and safety, not in institutions that failed them. The current crisis
will intensify the ‘revolutionary’ impulse to alter the social and political
structure as well as a minority counter-revolutionary impulse to retain the
social structure by an authoritarian movement, regime, or authoritarian
policies adopted by otherwise liberal-bourgeois regimes.

The dialectic between
the two impulses will entail the biggest challenge to the political elites in
pluralistic societies since the Great Depression. If as Jean-Jacques Rousseau
has argued the repressive conditions imposed by a minority over the majority
necessitate force morally and socially justified, then we can expect in the
upcoming months and years more voices of leftist dissent and reactionary
outcries to maintain the status quo by force. The current crisis has diluted if
not obviated policy-formation and consent-theory, as we knew it under Pax Americana throughout the Cold War and in the post-Cold era of the global
anti-terrorism campaign on which foreign policy of many states are based; with
all its intended and incidental domestic policy-formation consequences. To
counter the inevitable challenge that pluralistic societies will be facing, the
political and financial elites will have to deliver on the promise that after
the crisis there will continue to be ‘ever-rising living standards’ within the
existing stratified social and international order.

Such promises of what
Kenneth Boulding, Beyond Economics (1968) called ‘cowboy economics’ rooted in arrogance of financial power buttressed
and protected by the political elites will not be sufficient to convince people
who lost homes and businesses, jobs and careers, savings and retirement nest
eggs, and their lifestyle turned upside down. Given that the political and
financial elites have always manufactured consent, consent-theory is their
domain to define and implement to preserve and advance their privileged
position. Crises, however, bring out in otherwise docile-conformist citizens
tendencies that range from reactionary to revolutionary, from cynicism to
‘apocalyptic nihilism’, which is what most people act on and understand by the
term (as opposed to anarchist or existential). Besides resorting to more
austere laws to ‘contain’ dissidence as it arises with greater socioeconomic
problems, the state along with the media, think tanks, and anyone with access
and influence to public opinion will have to argue that any alternative to
systemic transformation of the social and political order nationally and
internationally will entail the demise of civilization as we know it.

Monday, 16 December 2013

Is the world less anti-American under the Obama
administration and will it become more so as the American financial and
political elites hoped when they facilitated the election of the first
African-American president? Of course, we will not know the definitive answer
for another three years or so. However, there are signs that the symbolic
significance of Obama combined with symbolic and moderately substantive-policy
changes, which have been necessitated by the multifaceted realities of the
mini-depression, have convinced people from around the world and from across the
ideological spectrum that America
may readjust its Pax Americana conduct, just as it did during the Great
Depression.

Anti-Americanism has been a reality for America’s
southern neighbors since the Spanish-American War and for reasons that range
from ideological and geopolitical, to economic and racial. Some would argue
that the genesis of anti-Americanism dates back to the Polk administration that
took the first step to put the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny into
practice. However, it was really after the Korean War and the start of the
non-aligned movement that US foreign policy and the role of the US in the world
came into question as outwardly ‘democratic’ (invariably defined by the
electoral system) at home but essentially imperial abroad.

During and
immediately after WWII, much of the world had residual goodwill and a positive
image of the US.
However, from the end of the Korean War until the controversial 1968 election
taking place during the Vietnam War, the US lost a great deal of its popularity,
not only with its nemesis the Communists around the world but with most
countries, and this despite the polarizing Cold War and secret deals foreign
governments cut with Washington. Contrary to the liberal view and one often
cited for anti-Americanism, most if not all countries were and still are far
less exercised about the nature U.S. institutions per se and far more concerned
about ‘American Exceptionalism’ and ‘US Transformation Policy’ that has
negatively impacted the lives of the majority of people around the world since
1945.

Total power that ranges from military and economic to political and
cultural, with the intent of shaping the world after its own image is the
source of anti-Americanism that has evolved in the sixty years. US meddling on
behalf of anti-democratic regimes in overt and covert operations throughout the
world for more than half a century are a major source of anti-Americanism that
transcends all ideological, ethnic, cultural, religious and political
boundaries. Support for Marcos in the Philippines, Suharto in Indonesia,
Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain, the colonels in Greece, apartheid in
South Africa, quasi-apartheid Israel against the Palestinians, and military
dictatorships in Latin America, all in the name of ‘freedom & democracy’
amid the Cold War, constitute sufficient proof to the entire world that the US
was a global empire and a threat to the sovereignty of smaller countries
reduced to client states. International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the
IMF and World Bank were also in the service of Washington and Wall Street to
keep client states in line.

French anti-Americanism, in essence the attempt of
Charles De Gaulle to affirm nationalism and preserve French identity by
accusing the Americans of Exceptionalism was an affirmation of France
(eventually and essentially Europe) coming of age and able to stand on its own
feet without having “Cold War-Mother America” influencing everything from
defense and foreign policies to commercial relations and cultural trends. But
even before De Gaulle awakening Europeans to the reality of lessening
dependence on the US and asserting their own direct influence in the Third
World, Latin America from the overthrow of Guatemala’s president Jacobo Arbenz
in 1954 to the CIA involvement in Allende’s overthrow in 1973 marked a period
of anti-Yankee sentiment that was a reflection of Latin Americans resenting US
interference in everything from trade unions and development projects to
influencing national elections.

After the Nicaraguan and Iranian revolutions of
1979 and especially after September 2001 various US agencies became interested in
identifying the sources of anti-Americanism. Departments of State, Defense, and
various intelligence agencies wanted to pinpoint specific areas where they
could improve America’s
image in the world to combat terrorism, but also for commercial/financial and
political considerations. Consulting companies and individual scholars provided
a great deal of material to the government, most of it useful from academic
perspective. However, hardly any of that material has been very practical in
reversing anti-Americanism in the world, not just among Muslims but all people
regardless of faith. The reason is the underlying assumption that there is
something fundamentally wrong with the ‘anti-Americans’ just as there was with
the former Communists who must be converted to the true faith through a PR
campaign that points the road to PAX AMERICANA.

PART II: Anti-Americanism under Obama

Hollywood and the American entertainment
industry have helped mold the view of American society, values, and perceptions
within and outside the US.
Therein may rest some of the sources of cultural and political anti-Americanism
when civilizations clash as in the case of Islam and the West. Besides the web
that allow a percentage of people to determine for themselves what goes on in
the US, the masses are invariably influenced by popular culture as the
corporate-owned media depicts it throughout the world. Of course, it is not US
per se, but inhumane US values and policies that are the core target of critics
from all ideological perspectives. These may involve everything from US
positions on climate change to privatization of public services that make
products and services less affordable for the poor. In some cases, centrists -
believers in the electoral process and some variation of liberalism - are the
most important anti-Americans, because they are invariably in power and conduct
policy.

Although nationalists of all ideological/political persuasions have
been and remain the arch-critics of Pax Americana, it is important to note that
the most militant anti-Americanism emanates not from the left but from the
right as in the case of Muslims as well as many Europeans and Latin Americans.
Nevertheless, hyperbolic anti-American rhetoric and some symbolic acts in
politics and media is a cultural trait demonstrating despair with
local/national conditions. For example, when the US is behind the World Bank’s
privatization of water resources and links immense development loans,
local/national social, political, media protests assume the phase of
anti-Americanism. Therefore, anti-American rhetoric and demonstrations are part
of how local and national activists react even if the US as a target
may be indirectly involved. At the same time, political parties and governments
in many countries use anti-Americanism to distract from their own incompetence,
systems swimming in corruption, or simply to win elections.

Governments and
political opposition also use anti-Americanism to criticize a neighboring
government that may have received more US aid, or greater diplomatic
backing from Washington.
In short, anti-Americanism has various domestic political dimensions and it is
a reflection of regional issues not always directly related to anti-Americanism
as form of protest against Washington
per se. As significantly, we must distinguish between anti-American
inflammatory rhetoric, and the reality of the social elites and broader middle
classes in the world emulating the American lifestyle that is a more important
export than any single product or service. Of course, it will take many years,
more than a single administration, and above all substantive policy changes –
from imperious to real co-existence – on the part of the US to reverse
global anti-Americanism that reached its zenith under Bush-Cheney.

The
well-publicized reports that the Bush-Cheney team had ordered the CIA to get
results from Muslim prisoners by systematically torturing them did not help
improve America’s image at a time US officials appeared puzzled about
‘outsiders hating our freedom’. Interestingly, at the time that the US was
violating the basic human rights of prisoners and violating the Geneva
Convention, it expected all others to abide by it – yet another case of
“American Exceptionalism” that ran counter to the very expensive PR campaign to
assuage the root causes of anti-Americanism in the world. Nor does it help that
the rhetoric and strategy seems to be pointing toward co-existence and multilateralism,
but the goal remains global hegemony. Is fear of the ‘democratic America’ (Washington’s projected
self-image) the overriding concern of people around the world as the
Bush-Cheney ideologues claimed? Or is it the arrogance and abuse of US government
and corporate power that results in the misery of billions of people whether it
is in protracted low-level Middle East wars,
or in impoverished Africa and Latin America where the World Bank is using loans to
superimpose privatization and deprive people of basic products and services at
affordable cost?

The world is clearly less afraid now that Obama is in the
White House. There is an assumption that the Bush-Cheney resounding failures in
the Middle East culminating in the 2008-09 US-based financial crisis will force
Washington to engage in multilateralism whether on the issue of world trade,
financial restructuring, finding solutions to nuclear proliferation, the
Palestinian-Israel conflict, etc. That the Obama administration has refrained
from manufacturing scenarios to create crises as did the previous regime, and
that it has opted for a managerial instead of a hard-line ideological approach
with regard to Russia, Iran, Cuba, Israel, and to a small degree even North
Korea is indicative that it could move toward more substantive changes as a
means of keeping its global leadership position.

Just as FDR the Obama
administration during its first term in office has proved that anti-Americanism can be mitigated with palatable
rhetoric and high visibility acts even of some import. However, the trend changed toward the end of the first Obama administration owing to the following developments. 1. US interference in Arab Spring uprisings from 2011 until 2013; 2. US drone warfare - declared a war crime by human rights organizations - in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Africa; 3. the increasingly clear picture that the Obama administration was just as adamant about preserving Pax Americana as all previous presidencies; 4. blatant US intervention in Egypt and Libya resulting in a de facto civil war and a society as divided as Iraq and Afghanistan;

Public opinion polls indicate that anti-Americanism around the world is about at the same level today as it was under George W. Bush, one of the most hated US Presidents outside of the US. And while it is true that anti-Americanism is highest in Muslim countries, it has actually risen sharply across the world, including Southern Europe, though not in northwest Europe. There is still a global perception that the US is an aggressive imperialist power that deprives other nations of their national sovereignty whether in diplomacy, military domain or economic affairs. Of course, it is true that the expectation levels for Obama, even by Fidel Castro and the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, were very high to ameliorate relations with the rest of the world by abandoning the aggressive foreign policies of his predecessor.

Given that tactics changed, with substance only when absolutely necessary because there was no other choice - as the case of Syria proved - people quickly adjusted their perceptions of America under Obama as another PR president following the exact same goals as previous administrations. So what is the answer to lowering the level of anti-Americanism around the world? PR experiments have obvious limitations. Only
substantive policies will determine if Pax Americana is currently under
adjustment and if the world will become less anti-American and the degree to
which the US
will enjoy global preeminence or gradual decline. Will the US alter its goals and tactics so that there will be less anti-Americanism around the globe? Not unless it is absolutely necessary and it has no choice.

"A
gripping, passion-filled, and suspenseful tale of love, betrayal,
political and religious intrigue, this novel entices the reader’s
senses and intellect beyond conventions. Slaves to Gods and Demons
takes the reader through a roller coaster enthralling journey of
personal trials and triumphs of a family emerging vanquished and
destitute after World War II.

Narrated by a young boy, Morfeos, modeled after the Greco-Roman pagan
deity of sleep and dreams, the book reveals the soul of a people trying
to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
the central theme that life is invariably a series of illusions, some
of which are euphoric, most horrifying, all an integral part of daily
existence.

Striving for purpose amid life’s absurdities after the destruction of
western civilization in two global wars, the characters in Slaves to
Gods and Demons struggle between holding on to the glory and grandeur of
a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
secular events in Western Civilization."